IT Employment

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$10,000 pay cut...

Well I got a nice christmas gift. I am a one man IT department who was paid by the hour including overtime. (salary non-exempt) New plant manager comes in (march) makes a few changes. I was requested to monitor my overtime to minimize it as much as possible. I maintian a 200+ node network all infrastructure wiring and manufacturing equipment computers and plc's. I'm the one that gets the phone call at midnight that a piece of equipment goes down usually a HDD failure. etc I tried to go back to school at night and ended up dropping my classes due to getting called back to work during my class time(s). I was informed that I got a raise 4K but that I was being moved to a salaried position. The pay increase was nice but 10K shy of what I made for the whole year.. This was NOT discussed or even hinted to me prior to the information being presented to me. I'm completely at a loss. I feel under appreciated, and basically left to like it or lump it. Any ideas or comments would be greatly appreciated.

I'm sorry, $10,000 is a lot of money. Leave. Polish up your resume. In my experience when you go from a hourly position to a salary, the pay is usually higher b/c you dont have the opportunity for o/t. In the meanwhile, explain to them if they're taking severe advantage hourly that you want time off in lieu of overtime. Meaning if you get called in for 3 hours, you come in 3 hours late, leave 3 hours early, or save up the hours and take a day off when they accumulate.

Alt

The other alternative is: they don't want you to take O/T? Fine, but when they call you, you get to say, "Sorry, it will have to wait till tomorrow morning when I get in." See how fast the boss retracts that statement.

What's good for the Goose....

It's always amazing to see how non-IT people see the IT job role, especially when it's a one-man band. I think that the reponse above about time in leu or not coming in out-side of "salaried" hours is a great call. I was working for a software house and was salaried, but was paid for being available for out of hours emergencies. It will also help to quantify the number of times you are called out and the time spent. Good Luck.

Handwriting on the wall

If you were offered $4k more and you're still $10k under what you've been making, that means your net economic loss is $14k.

Let's make a couple of assumptions and do a little simple math.

Let's say you're at around $50k and get paid time and a half for OT. Let's further say you take two weeks off every year. Put all the numbers together and you're working approximately 8 hours of overtime a week. Every single week. Week after week after week.

That's a lot of overtime.

Your employer previously told you to monitor (code for limit) your overtime. Then they come along and offer you a not unreasonable raise (at $50k annually a $4k raise is 8%) which artificially limits your compensation, since you're now no longer eligible for overtime pay.

What a surprise. Didn't see this coming?

One of two things is going on here. Either you've been abusing overtime and your employer finally caught up with you, or your employer has no concept of what it takes to get your job done and is really the one who's guilty of abuse. Only you know which is the right answer.

I'm just trying to put this into perspective for you. You were wondering about being appreciated and what to do about your situation. That's a function of the reason for what's happened to you.

People who routinely work a lot of overtime typically are either incompetent or in the wrong job. Some OT once in a while is inevitable. Lots of overtime, all the time, is a danger signal.

Either way...sounds to me like it's time for you to move on.

It sucks that this happened right around the holidays, which makes me think it's your employer who's at fault here. Good management knows better than to ignore the calendar when making these kinds of moves, unless the it's a save-the-company scenario and in that case they should have explained that to you. Best of luck.

Did Exactly that

Ive done exactly as you have stated, Come in 3 hours later, left early so they did not have to pay me for the overtime etc. Ive had to do bullets of accomplishments / tasks and the time for each. Ive even gone as far as found ways to save the plant money by increasing yield on raw materials. The real kicker here is all I hear is what a great job I'm doing then wham a kick in the face...

Other things to consider

It's very easy in a situation such as yours to personalize what's going on. On the other hand, there are many possible contributing factors.

They've told you you're doing a great job. OK, why not take them at face value? You probably are doing a great job. It's nice they notice.

They've limited your compensation potential. Not necessarily big bad management coming down on the neck of the working stiff again. Is the company in trouble? Did you recently lose a big order? Not get an order you were counting on? Economic downturn? Cost increases? And here's the $64,000 question...are you the only one who's been put in this position, or has the pain been equally mayonnaised across the whole work force?

Did you discuss this with your boss? Is it at all possible the economic impact to you is not obvious to your management? (Unlikely, but who knows.) Whatever, it's in your best interest to vociferously make your displeasure with this situation known. You probably won't get very far in terms of getting your comp increased but at least you'll make it clear you're not a person to be taken lightly or underestimated. It's all about respect. Go get some.

What kind of relationship do you have with management? Can you quietly and professionally, but firmly and clearly, have a discussion with them as to what they're doing and why? Is it possible there's something going on in the company of which you're not aware? (Highly likely...management doesn't typically check everything with the staff first.)

If you've been there a while and you know you have a jerk for a boss, who also has a jerk for a boss, then you're stuck. Not in your job, but with the situation at hand, and the only thing you can do is leave. If your management doesn't typically do stupid things then give them the benefit of the doubt and go find out what's going on and why. Maybe you could work out some kind of bonus program...based on exceeding an aggressive set of documented deliverables in the coming year you get some sugar.

If at the end of the day you're unsatisfied and see no light at the end of the tunnel, then you know what to do. Good luck in your new job if that's the case.

Legal Remedy

If your job duties are essentially the same, and just the name of the job is changed and declared now to be a salaried (management) position, that's simply not legal (at least in the US). Now, it may be they were paying you hourly when the position should have been salaried. In that case, you won't have much option. But management (salaried) positions have some definite criteria in order to be considered management. Spend a little and check with a labor attorney to see if they think you have any recourse. There have been some hefty fines levied recently against companies trying to save money by making hourly jobs salaried simply to get rid of overtime.

Also, your base seems really low to me. Check out the salary tool on Monster.com to see what the salary is for comparable jobs in your area. Any and all information you can gather will be good to go in and negotiate.

41Kbux?

It must be nice. I've been in the I.T. game since 1984, tons of experience from DOS 2.x through WindowsXPPro, Novell through 5.12, SCO Unix, Linux, MAC through OS10, certs for every HP printer through LJ4500 series, MS certs (for what they are{nt}worth), IBM hardware certs A+, etc, etc. I'm making 36K with all that. Our network admin is barely doing 40k. If you are making over that, you had best hang on. You are doing really well.BTW, before anyone posts, the _only_ reason that I stay here is the insurance.

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